Today, a new set of rankings for children’s booster seats has been released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. For parents thinking about moving their children into these seats from their current car seats, understanding and heeding these ratings is essential to ensuring safety.
The ratings focus on both backless and highback models. Both types of seats allow the child to be raised to the level where the seatbelt can be used safely, they just do so differently, with the highback chairs providing support to a child’s head and the backless ones relying on a lap belt guide and a plastic clip for the shoulder.
The latest analysis by the IIHS provided ratings to 31 additional models of car seat that had not been rated before. The Harmony Transit Deluxe and the Graco Affix and Connext received the Best Bet designation along with 16 other models. Booster seats are ranked on a scale ranging from Not Recommended to Check Fit to Good Bet to Best Bet.
The IIHS notes that their ratings system, which dates back to 2008, has perhaps provided the impetus for the makers of boosters to improve safety. Manufacturers have begun to partner with the IIHS to make sure that the boosters they’re introducing to the marketplace are meeting the requirements of safety.